While at X-Day last summer, I had the opportunity to participate in “Ask Dr. Hal”, where people wrote down a question for Dr. Hal to answer. He is very good at giving 3-minute answers to 3-second questions. I cheated and slipped in a “two part question”, that was really 2 questions.

1) Why is the sky?
2)Why does The Conspiracy value cleanliness so much?

Awesomely, Dr. Hal managed to talk for six minutes to answer these 2 questions. Eventually, the Hour Of Slack radio show broadcast my answers. I extracted them and re-hosted them for my personal posterity. Now presenting: Dr. Hal Answers Clint’s 2 Questions:

Carolyn really wanted to go camping at least one more time this season so that she can take the kitties while they are still young. After being rained out a few weeks ago, Carolyn was determined to go no matter what. The forecast called for rain — but only 0.1 inch during the day (60% chance, and it didn’t happen). But there was a 70% chance of rain during the night — half an inch; significantly more (and that did happen). Carolyn was pissed.

After much convincing, we ended up below our six-person quorum, but still had a good crowd, with Tabbitha, Eli, Carolyn, Clint, and even a surprise Evan! Good times.

Unfortunately, it did rain on us. Eli set up Carolyn’s small tarp with some help from Evan and Carolyn, and we spent a good amount of time huddled underneath it. But this was only at night time. And it didn’t rain hard — you could go potty without an umbrella and stay relatively dry.

Eventually we all realized we couldn’t keep our eyes open. We made a pact to take a 1-hour nap, and we all went to our separate tents. When Carolyn woke up several hours later, she heard the rain was still at it, and decided not to try to wake anyone up.

Tabbitha apparently got up really early and somehow got really soaked. She was mostly dry by the time everyone else woke up. She hung out in the path, with no trees overhead — apparently a lot of the water falling was from the trees, and it wasn’t *really* raining so much if you stood in a path with no trees over you.

Because of the rain, most of our pictures are from the next day.

The next day was dry, beautiful, and we spent quite some time (8:30AM-2PMish) there. In the end, we were there for 27 hours, and only awake and being rained on for about 4 of them. Sleep was 8 more hours, and the other 15 hours were awesome! We ate like kings and had more fun than if we’d stayed in!

Oranjello, Lemonjello – in the car
Driving on the way up, the kitties found a nice place to nap. Nice, but not necessarily safe. With their help, Clint did manage to flip the car into neutral once.

martian pineapple – delapidated
Upon arriving, Carolyn sought out the fungus thing Gene had discovered last trip, which Clint christened Martian Pineapples. The stuff had turned black! What’s up with that?

Oranjello, Lemonjello – in the firepit
The kitties explored the fire pit for the first time together. So far, they’re batting 0 for 2 (car gear shifter, firepit) with finding safe places to hang out. We were glad there wasn’t a fire made already. Fortunately they’re not so stupid as to walk into an open flame.

Oranjello, Lemonjello – by the firepit – Oranjello de-tangling
One thing we learned camping: Lemonjello is the smartest kitty when it comes to his leash getting untangled. He will actually try to untangle himself by walking different directions — sometimes systematically (for a few seconds anyway, which is as long as cats’ attention spans last). This includes walking backwards. He would do this until he either untangled himself, pulled hard enough to knock over what he was tangled on, or discovered that he was truly trapped with no hope for escape — at which point, he’d start meowing at the top of his lungs. But he never complained right away; he always tried to work it out on his own.

Carolyn, Oranjello, Lemonjello – tying rope around treeOranjello is a big kitty now, and he has no fear. He was started to wander too far, and further tests indicated he would have definitely wandered completely out our eyesite if left unchecked. So Carolyn decided to tie him up so she wouldn’t have to worry about him getting lost.Meanwhile, Clint‘s solution to deal with tethering Oranjello down temporarily while Carolyn ties the rope to the tree? Tie Oranjello’s leash to little Lemonjello’s leash. This did indeed slow Oranjello down, keeping him from wandering off (even slowly)… But this solution would work much better with two equal-sized cats. Lemonjello was being pulled all over the place, and was quite miserable due to being dragged around by Oranjello. But it only lasted a couple minutes, and Lemonjello got to wander free all night, while Oranjello got to be tied down — tangling himself over and over and over again all night long. Who really won?

Chill kitty face:

camping – 169-691Lemonjello, Oranjello – on lap
These cats like to stay on your lap at times. Here they are chilling on Carolyn’s lap.Oranjello has the most relaxed cat expression ever! “Whateva’, man!”

Clint demonstrating how Lemonjello can just hang from his leash without being choked — something essential for cat leashes. His tail looks sooo pathetic.

Of course, cats were still a bit freaked out at times. But nobody was as scared as Misfit was when he went:

Oranjello – hanging out in tentOranjello took shelter in the kitty tent. Look how alarmed he is !There was also a really funny moment when he was behind the tent, and tried to jump through the rear screen ‘window’ of our tent. Twice. That was LOL-inducing.

Eli coming meant the quality of our food was better than if we went to a restaurant…

Lemonjello – leash ears = murderous intentionsClint gave Lemonjello leash ears. He did NOT like that. Notice how he looks like he is plotting Clint’s imminent murder.

I can be cheezburger?

We had some leftover buns that we decided to throw into the woods for the birds. When Clint got his, he got a great idea to make Lemonjello into a cheezburger.

And of course, this disgusting but very neat and interesting thing came by:

One of those evil-looking caterpillers came around. Oranjello was very interested. The caterpiller had some nasty spikes that he would curl up and point at Oranjello, and Oranjello did get poked a couple of times by getting his nose to close to it.

The group picture this trip came out rather weirdly. Parts of 3 different pictures were incorporated:

Like this:

My Parody Religion Is Better Than Your Parody Religion … or: How I Survived X-Day XI [2008]
Days Four and Five

DAY FOUR: X-DAY

OH SHIT!! WE MISSED THE END OF THE WORLD!!! Attending The Rupture is sort of the point of going to X-Day! And it happens at 7AM on 7/5/1998. (But when is 1998? Obviously our current calendars are wrong.) And we didn’t get up until past 9… DAMN! (more…)

I first heard about the Church Of The SubGenius on a national WWIV syndicated message board, on some BBS, way back in the late 1980s. The ridiculosity of it all intrigued me, as did the parody of organized religion. It is a parody religion, like Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, but superior in every way: Actual depth, substance, philosophy, and even truth. Superior art, superior video, superior radio shows, superior events. (Um, FSM doesn’t have any of these, does it? FSM is basically like parodying the Holy Bible with a knock knock joke or a single middle finger; CotS is like parodying the Holy Bible with a more ridiculous bible.)